Volunteer Wardens for Nature Reserves

Our volunteer wardens are the eyes and ears of our Nature Reserves and play a special role within Wiltshire Wildlife Trust.We are currently seeking to recruit new wardens for a number of sites with vacancies.

Your Responsibilities

At the most basic level, the volunteer wardens tend to be people who regularly visit the nature reserve local to them. Many simply walk around and report back if they see anything out of the ordinary; if trees have fallen blocking paths but many want to get more involved. Some undertake practical management or lead volunteer group, some are more interested in recording the wildlife they see and others get involved in leading guided walks or raising money towards the management of the site.

Our Support

We can provide support from our Reserves Officers and Estates Team. We are also able to offer some training opportunities to enhance your role. We host an annual meeting for Wardens. We also keep wardens informed of anything that is happening on their reserve. We often have more than one warden, especially on the larger sites.

We will let you know of a series of sites over the next few months. At the moment we are collating the annual reports for our woodland sites and are reminded that we have vacancies at:

Peppercombe Wood, Urchfont

A small piece of ancient woodland just on the edge of Urchfont. The wood slopes steeply down to a small brook. This would particularly suit an individual who lives locally and regularly walks in the area and can report back. We undertake minimum management on this site but have replaced gates and rebuilt parts of the paths when they washed away when a large tree fell.

Hagbourne Copse, Swindon

Surrounded by Motorways, 6 lane carriageways, warehouses and factories this is the most unusual of nature reserves. In early spring this is a glorious carpet of richly scented bluebells amongst the Oak trees, full of bird song and butterflies. You can disappear and almost block out the noise coming from everything surrounding the site. Once part of the Lydiard Park Estate, there are plenty of opportunities for involvement. This is a great place to wander around or get involved in the practical management task we run, or to explore and record the wildlife seen.

If you are interested in either of these roles please contact the Land management team at Wiltshire Wildlife Trust on 01380 725670 then press 4.